


on a thousand miles and more

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Travel, same old same old tbqh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 01:10:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5848018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"That’s why, after Granada, they decide to stick to the places they went to together. </em>
</p>
<p>  <em>Retrospectively, maybe that’s when it becomes less of a holiday and more of a pilgrimage. Louis thinks he’s beginning to understand what they’re searching for. It’s something akin to closure, but not closure exactly. Something more tenuous than that. More difficult to put into words.</em></p>
<p>  <em>Something like the first exhalation you take after a particularly horrendous nightmare and you think god, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real. </em></p>
<p>  <em>Except that, in their case, it was."</em></p>
<p>[Harry and Louis go back to the places that made them who they are.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	on a thousand miles and more

**Author's Note:**

> first i need to thank [Jen](http://priceofsalts.tumblr.com/); [Tish](http://genderneutralsongs.tumblr.com/)& [Marianna](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshiner/pseuds/sunshiner/) for putting up with me during the five months it took me to write this and for always being encouraging. 
> 
> then a big big thank you to [Anna](http://annaroserae.tumblr.com/) who did a great job at editing and proofreading this fic. thank you so much! 
> 
> this is for [Clara](http://ferninism.tumblr.com/) who came up with the original prompt. i'm sorry it turned out a tad angstier than first intended but i talked about the light so i hope you still like it! 
> 
> A/N: this is pure fiction. it's in no way intended to reflect any kind of reality or my views on harry and louis' mental health or what they've been through. it's just me toying with an idea and i hope it will be understood as such.  
> finally, the title of the fic and quotes at the beginning of each part come from a poem by Lea Silhol entitled "Kay (a grown up song)" that can be found in _Fovea_. (the book is unfortunately incredibly hard to find though)
> 
> enjoy!

**_0\. London  
_** **_How come everything turned so wrong?_ **

Like most of the decisions they’ve made over the years, this one is mutual. It’s only been a few months since everything ended, but Louis has been growing increasingly restless, and has watched Harry become quieter and quieter, until one morning it all becomes too much, and Louis snaps and blurts out,

“Let’s take a holiday. Like, a proper one. We don’t have much planned for the next few weeks and we can easily reschedule what we have to do.”

It’s not like he expects Harry to actually put up a fight, knows that Harry needs this as much as he does, but he still feels a bit surprised at the visible relief that comes across Harry’s face and the way his body sags against the kitchen counter.

 “Yes,” Harry says, and it’s enough for Louis to know that he said the right thing. 

 ---

**_1\. Europe_  
****_I made this entire journey for you_ **  

They start with Paris.

It’s not a conscious decision, not exactly. But Paris isn’t far away and it seems practical, and if Louis can avoid taking another plane he’s going to jump on the opportunity. He’s tired of planes. He’s tired of most things, really.

So they clear up their schedules, pack their bags, book a hotel in Paris and, well, here they are. On their very own holiday. It’s not the lads’ holiday Louis has been talking about continuously when asked about their plans for the break, and it’s not the holiday they had sometimes longingly talked about over the years when they felt so exhausted even breathing seemed to hurt. It feels like something else. Something more of a necessity and less of a choice.

He’s not sure what they’re doing, what they’re searching for – if what they’re searching for can even be found – only he knows that this isn’t purposeless. Unpacking his suitcase in the hotel room they’ve booked at the Meurice, Louis decides figuring it out doesn’t matter, at least not right now. 

If there’s something to be found they’ll get to it in time. Louis knows that sometimes there’s not much you can do to change what’s happening around you, and you just have to let things run their course. The past five years have taught him that. He lets his fingers linger on the words tattooed across his chest, taking in the way Harry’s spine is a bit stiffer than it should be, the way his gestures, while unpacking his own suitcase, are a bit too strained.

It is what it is.

\--- 

They spend their first days in Paris doing the most tourist-y things they can think of. There’s an underlying current of tension ever present between them but it’s easy to dismiss it. The thing is Louis knows it doesn’t stem from their relationship, that it has nothing to do with them at all.

(Maybe it does. Maybe, like everything else, it has to do with their relationship. Or, at least, that’s what they’ve been told, again and again throughout the years, by countless record label executives, PR agents and social media managers. Sometimes, even by the guilty look in their bandmates’ eyes. Maybe it has to do with the fact that nothing has ever been easy for them, and that now that it should be they find themselves at a loss. What are you supposed to do with freedom, Louis thinks, when you’ve never really had it before?

You can get drunk on it, at first. And they had been for a little while. They’d been so fucking happy the memories are almost blurred.

He soon realised that happiness, like everything else, passes.)

Still, as long as things between them are fine they may be able to hold on to the illusion that they don’t have to discuss this, that it will somehow solve itself on its own.

They have fun together – they always have fun together. They go to the Beaubourg and Louis laughs at the strange modern art pieces Harry loves so much, they wander through the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter and Louis imagines lives in which they would both meet as students there. They drink hot chocolate at Angelina’s and have to skip dinner because they still feel so full, even hours later. They spend an entire afternoon sitting on the chairs of the Luxembourg, watching old French men play chess and trying to predict their next move. Louis is better at it than Harry.

They have fun.

One evening, they take a stroll along the banks of the Seine and decide to sit down not too far from Notre-Dame. It’s a bit windy and, to be quite honest, cold – which Louis hates – and there are goosebumps forming on the exposed part of Harry’s shoulder. Louis kisses the naked skin, softly, and thinks _I love you so_.

\--- 

It all goes downhill shortly after.

Louis should have seen it coming. It’s not like his gaze lingers away from Harry often, not like he hasn’t spent years watching him cautiously, always wary of what would be too much, of the breaking point. It’s not like he hasn’t spent years taking care of Harry’s mental health, always ready to take on the burden himself if he felt the need to.

He didn’t see it coming, because he didn’t want to.

So when Harry breaks down, it comes as both a surprise and a relief. A surprise, because Louis wonders how he’s managed to dismiss all the signs so easily when he never did before, how he blinded himself to the point where he thought that they would somehow manage to get through this without really having to talk about what happened to them during the past five years. A relief, because underneath the overwhelming guilt, the only thought lingering on Louis’ mind is _, finally. Here we are._

They’re in their hotel room, both reading in bed when Harry says, 

“Do you remember this interview we once did in Paris? The one people always talk about.” 

“Sure,” Louis answers easily.

“Sometimes I wonder- Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t there when everything went wrong. If, like, without that interview, without Paris, things wouldn’t have been this hard.” 

Louis knows exactly what Harry means and resents him a bit for it, because if there’s one thing he’s tried hard not to think about, it’s all the things they could’ve done to avoid being hurt so much throughout the years. It’s a useless thought process, he knows. One that can only end in madness, in replaying again and again what they should have done differently, what they should have done _better_.

“I don’t think it’s much use thinking about this, love,” he says. “If it hadn’t been this interview, and we don’t know it was, it would’ve been something else. We were never gonna win this round, you know?”

“I know that, I guess. But there’s also something about it- something that makes me feels guilty, almost?”

What Louis wants to say is: _no_ , and _you shouldn’t_ , and _guilty of what_. What he says is, “I’m sorry Haz.”

“Please, Lou. Please don’t be. You’ve done so much, you’ve mean so much. I honestly couldn’t have asked for someone better or more loving than you.”

There’s something fragile lingering in Harry’s voice, something like a warning. Now that they’ve breached the subject, Louis knows there’s no going back, that they’ll have to see this through to its end. 

“What do you need, love?”

“I think,” Harry answers, “I need to go see the sea.”

\--- 

“Is it crazy?” Harry asks. “Is it crazy to miss it? To miss how things used to be?”

He’s sitting on a beach in Normandy, jeans rolled up above his ankles, feet in the sand. He’s let his hair loose and the wind is making it dance. He looks incredibly small and young. For a moment, Louis is reminded of the sixteen-year-old boy he fell in love with, imagines another beach, a music video being recorded, but the illusion fades away as quickly as it came. The boy Harry was at sixteen would never have let his hair grow that long. He also wouldn’t have asked Louis to tell him he isn’t crazy.

Harry is, Louis thinks, surer of himself now, of who he is and what he wants. What he isn’t sure of is how, exactly, he belongs to this brand new world. They’ve both felt adrift for months, not knowing how to adjust to this new reality, to what their life now is. And it’s not like Louis hasn’t seen them, over the years, those lines quietly fracturing Harry’s spirit, his fierce belief that what people were doing to them was wrong. There’s a feeling of resignation that comes with age, when you’ve fought so hard and for so long that you’re left with nothing, not even hatred for what has been done to you.

Louis knows what Harry is trying to ask him. He means, _is it crazy that I miss fighting and feeling alive_. He means, _is it crazy that I miss having a sense of purpose, a reason to wake up for every morning and get out of bed_. Louis knows it, because he misses it too.

“Lou?” Harry asks again, voice strained. He doesn’t turn back to look at Louis, as if Louis couldn’t tell from the tone of his voice alone that he’s crying. Louis thinks, _you’re kinda breaking my heart_.

“I don’t think it’s crazy to miss something you’ve known for so long,” he answers. He takes a few steps forward and sits down next to Harry.

“It’s kind of fucked up though, isn’t it?”

“Haz,” Louis says, “we’ve just spent the past years of our lives, the entire duration of our relationship, in the closet. We’ve had to lie to so many people, and not only people we don’t know or don’t care about, but people we both love. We’ve had to do things we hated again and again and fucking smile while doing them. We’ve had to keep our heads high when we wanted to break down and cry and we fucking made it. I don’t think,” he adds more softly, “that anyone could blame us for being a bit fucked up right now.”

Harry stays silent, for a while, and Louis is getting worried his little speech didn’t help when he sees Harry’s shoulders trembling but then, Harry chuckles, softly at first before it becomes a full blown laughter and Louis thinks, _I’m so glad I met you_.

“Hey,” he says. He’s aiming at indignant but it comes out as desperately fond. “What are you laughing at? Not my inspirational speech, I hope.”

“It’s just,” Harry answers, “you’re right. We’re here, and we’re alive and we are free. So, like, fuck everything, let’s go eat lobster and drink the most expensive champagne we can find.” 

“Oh, expensive champagne? Kind of wild, Haz.” 

Harry just laughs and it’s like something Louis had known was there yet had somehow failed to acknowledge has suddenly been lifted from his shoulders. Not the entire weight that has been crushing him, not really, but a substantial part of it. This is how healing starts, Louis thinks, and that’s what they’re going to do.

They go back to the hotel and drink a bit too much champagne and feed each other lobster portions and it’s fun.

They stumble in bed way past midnight, kissing sloppily. Harry divests him clumsily, pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses against his jaw, his neck, his collarbones and it makes Louis giggle. When Harry asks why, Louis answers: “Reminds me of the X factor, love. Feels like we’re sixteen and eighteen again, doesn’t it?” 

“Yeah,” Harry whispers, breath hot against Louis’ neck. “It kind of does.” Except, Louis thinks, Harry is so much bigger now and much better at this – not that they were ever bad together, they just went from being really good to being fucking amazing. His hair is so much longer and Louis loves it; his nails still bear traces of nail polish and god- everything is the same yet different and Louis wouldn’t change any of it, wouldn’t dare presume that it could get better than this, Harry’s hand on his cock, jerking him off in a nondescript hotel room, tasting like champagne and something sweeter than this, something like _mine_ and _forever_ and _all that I’ve ever wanted_.

It doesn’t take long for Louis to come and Harry holds him through his orgasm, peppering his face with light kisses – forehead, cheekbones, jaw, cheekbones again – muttering how Louis is _so lovely, I love you so much_ ; whispering, _I can’t believe how beautiful you are, god Lou_. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours Louis thinks, _you’re kinda breaking my heart_.

“Where do you wanna go next?” Harry asks as they’re falling asleep.

Louis answers: “Well, if you’re game I have an idea.”

“Whatever you want, Lou” Harry mumbles sleepily.

They stay wrapped up in each other for hours, Harry in Louis’ arms, Louis unwilling to move in fear of disturbing his sleep. Louis looks at Harry and thinks that it is. It _is_ scary. That two people should love each other so much, against every logical ending, despite every sound and practical statistic. Louis knows what frightens Harry. He knows how Harry sometimes wonders if the fight was the most important part of their relationship, if the fighting was the reason they held onto each other so much.

There’s a figure of speech for that, when you only use part of something to describe the whole, but Louis can’t quite remember its name. He thinks that the part of their love that was involved in the fight is going to get smaller and smaller as time passes, until it fades away, until it only belongs to a time irrevocably over.

Slowly, Louis disentangles himself from Harry and grabs his laptop. He books two plane tickets for Granada.

No one, he thinks, is ever gonna be happier than they are. 

\---

Granada is like Louis remembers it. All narrow, climbing streets and beautiful sunsets and Harry is subdued during the entire trip, which isn’t something Louis was expecting. 

“Don’t you like the city?” he asks, one night in their hotel room.

“I do,” Harry answers.

“Then what’s wrong?” He’s not sure he wants to know the answer but knows better than not to ask.

“You’ve been there before, yeah?”

“Yeah." 

“I don’t remember that,” Harry frowns. “And I can’t tell if I just don’t remember it or if you never told me.” 

It’s unfair and Louis feels a bit like screaming; would scream if he thought it would help them in any way.

“I did tell you, Haz.”

“I don’t remember,” Harry repeats, slightly petulant.

“Haz?” Louis asks, sitting down next to him on the bed. He knows that Harry is hurting with something he’s not able to articulate quite yet, something they’ve barely even begun to breach in France, something they’ve kept silent for five years because it was never the time to talk about it. Louis thinks that they have time now, all the time in the world.

“I keep doing that, don’t I?” Harry laughs, and if it’s a bit too low and shaky– well.

“It’s fine,” Louis answers, because it really is.

Harry is lying on the bed, looking almost as awkward as he did when he was sixteen and it was just the beginning of their story, and there’s something that burns hot in Louis’ veins, something more than love, something akin to infinite tenderness. Louis lies down next to him, careful not to touch him, to let him have his space.

“I thought France helped,” Harry finally says. “But it was just. It was just the beginning, wasn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You know what’s funny? Now that we are here and like, freer than we’ve ever been, I find myself so jealous and resentful of all those places you went without me, all those times we couldn’t be together. And I never really used to mind before. I didn’t even think about it, because it was pointless. And it’s like, every single thought I’ve repressed or like, tried so hard not to think about during the past five years, is suddenly coming back to haunt me and it’s driving me fucking mad, Lou. I don’t know what to do with them.” He sighs and adds: “I just didn’t think it would be like this. I didn’t think it would be so hard.”

And Louis. Well, Louis knows Harry almost better than he knows himself. It’s not only that he’s seen Harry grow up, it’s that they grew up together, entangled like vines, and know each other like only two people who went from being children to being adults together can.

He could say I _know_ , and _I understand_. He wants to tell Harry that he knows they took so much upon themselves it’s no wonder they’re bleeding now, no wonder that all the hurt that has festered under their skin is trying to get out. It’s like they’ve been kept in the dark for so long, the outside and the sun is blinding them and it hurts and he can’t be sure they’ll ever get used to it. He wants to say he knows it’s better to be out there but that they don’t have to know how to feel about it yet. It’s like they’ve been underwater for so long, they can barely remember how to breathe and every inspiration they take feels like drowning instead.

And, like two people who grew up together, they have this uncanny ability to hurt the other, to say the exact words that could make the other’s heart shatter in a million pieces. Harry doesn’t want to hurt him, but Harry's also the only one who could make Louis wonder if he were wrong to think they’ve been through all this together.

_You left me_ , Harry is saying. _There was a moment in time when I needed you and you weren’t there_.

“Tell me,” Louis says. “Tell me all the places I went without you and I’ll get you there, with me. Tell me all the places where you wanted us to go together, all the places where you want us to go together and I’ll get us there. I swear I will, Haz. But there’s one thing I want you to know – you have to know. Wherever I went, wherever I had to go, you were always there with me. There was never one time, never, where I didn’t think about you, about what it would be like for you to be there with me, about the things you’d say, the things you’d love, the things you’d laugh at.”

“Lou,” Harry whispers.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

Like two people who grew up together, they know how to forgive, to erase the past, to leave behind the things that used to hurt.

_This is enough_ , Harry is saying. _This is enough and more_.

“It’s fine, love. Now tell me, please?”

So Harry does. He whispers names of exotic destinations against Louis’ skin, of places more evocative than truly appealing. It doesn’t matter that they’ll probably never go there or, that if they did, those places would never hold up to their expectations. It’s the promise of a future together, of more cities to discover, of more streets to learn that keeps them awake until it’s almost dawn. 

Louis watches Harry’s eyelashes flutter, his breathing slowing down, his body going to sleep. What he learns is that Granada was a mistake and that like some mistakes it was also a blessing. It’s not the time for them to discover new things, but the time to go back to the places that made them.

That’s why, after Granada, they decide to stick to the places they went to together. 

Retrospectively, maybe that’s when it becomes less of a holiday and more of a pilgrimage. Louis thinks he’s beginning to understand what they’re searching for. It’s something akin to closure, but not closure exactly. Something more tenuous than that. More difficult to put into words.

Something like the first exhalation you take after a particularly horrendous nightmare and you think _god,_ it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real. 

Except that, in their case, it was. 

\---

“This can’t be it, Haz,” Louis declares after a few minutes of careful examination.

Harry – the twat – only laughs at him, open and bright.

“It is,” Harry says. 

“How can you be so sure?” 

“See the Replay store sign over there? I remember the sign,” Harry answers. 

“It looks smaller than in my memory. The bench, I mean.”

“Memories are faulty things, Lou. And, like, we’ve grown up since. It’s not really surprising that this bench would seem smaller than it was at the time.”

Louis finally tears his gaze away from the bench to look at Harry, beaming at him, something mischievous in his eyes and he can’t help but smile at him in return, despite his confusion.   Here you are, Louis thinks. Here Harry is, without the hurt of Granada and Paris weighting on his shoulders. He looks, in this moment, incredibly young.

“Hi,” Louis says, without really intending to.

“Hi,” Harry answers in delight, like it’s something they do, greeting each other in the middle of the day, even though they spent every moment of it together.

“Hi,” Louis repeats. “Hi, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Louis looks at the bench again and something inside him clenches.

“It’s the right bench,” he says. 

“I know it is,” Harry says slowly. “I told you it was. What made you change your mind?” 

“It’s the light,” Louis murmurs. “I just. I recognize the light, Haz.” 

“The light?”

“Yeah, don’t you remember? We were- we were sitting on this bench, which definitely seems a bit too small, and Niall was laughing next to us but what I remember the most is the light. It was both very bright and very soft and it seemed to create a cocoon destined to protect us. It was a beautiful light.”

“So we found the bench.”

“We did.”

“What do you want to do now?”

“Maybe. Maybe we could just sit here for a little while? I’d like to make the most of the light.” 

So that’s what they do. They sit on this bench, letting the light illuminate them until it slowly disappears. For the longest time, they don’t speak. 

“It’s not only the light,” Louis finally says. “It’s the way it made you look – the way it made everything look. Like an effortlessly happy spring afternoon. Like we could take over the world but didn’t know it yet. So I guess I remember the light and like, the sense of wonder I felt at the time. A sense of possibility. I miss it, sometimes.” 

“There’s still a lot to look forward to though, isn’t there?”

“Of course there is.”

Although, he thinks later, maybe things are a little less bright now. Maybe they won’t ever feel as easy as they once seemed, no matter how incredibly similar the light looks like.

Still, Louis decides when they fly out of Sweden, Stockholm counts as a success.

\--- 

On the flight from Stockholm to Rome, Louis thinks about all the places where they could stop.

He thinks about going back to Cologne during Pride and erasing the hurt of a tweet sent in November. He thinks about Milan and how happy they were there. About a picture of them hugging on a scooter.

After Stockholm, he wonders if all those memories he now thinks of as happy aren’t a lie too. If, like the bench being too small, time hasn’t distorted them to make them seem more joyous and luminous than they really were, some idealized bright last days before it all fell apart. 

He thinks about Harry, sitting on a beach, asking him if it was crazy to miss it.

After fighting for so long, Louis guesses, looking at Harry sleeping peacefully in his seat, it becomes a question of what’s acceptable and what’s not. It’s not about going back in time and starting over in the hope of finding some elusive clean slate, but more about knowing what you want and what you’re willing to do to get it. Some bargains, it’s true, you make with high placed executives and those who are directly responsible for your situation, but those aren’t the ones that are now keeping them awake at night, that they come back to again and again when everything outside their hotel room is quiet and they can only hear the faint rumours of cars passing in the distance.

No, the things that are keeping them awake at night are the bargains they had to do with themselves. The ones that were a promise between them and them only. The things you convince yourself you’re prepared to do to win, the things you convince yourself you can do without them breaking you. 

There’s a fine line between the sacrifices you decide to make to save yourself and when those become too much. Louis knows they’ve crossed this line, at times. The line between self-preservation and self-destruction.

Maybe, this whole trip isn’t so much about forgiving what other people did to them as to forgiving what they did to themselves. Which is– harder. It’s one thing to look at someone, knowing it’ll be the last time and thinking I forgive you. It’s another thing entirely when you have to bear the choices you’ve made for as long as you live.

The plane is high in the sky and Louis whispers in Harry’s neck,

“I’ve never blamed you. Not for any of it. But, for what it’s worth, I forgive you. And if this is what you need I’ll forgive you every day for the rest of our lives.”

Harry doesn’t stir.

\--- 

Their first morning in Rome, they decide to go see the Coliseum. It’s not like they haven’t been there before, but Louis loves it and Harry doesn’t have any reason not to indulge him. It’s one of those bright and clear mornings, bearing in themselves an infinite sense of possibility. It feels like they could accomplish anything, be whatever they wanted to be. Louis loves those mornings, how they make him feel. Young and free and ready to conquer the world. 

There’s a reason, Louis thinks, watching the awe spreading on Harry’s face when they arrive in front of the Coliseum, why they did all this. It’s to be able to be here now, to experience this very moment, which doesn’t seem in any way remarkable, yet is already significant enough for Louis to know that it’ll stay with him as a cherished memory.

This is what happiness feels like. Not the kind he felt before, when they were both drunk on freedom, but the kind that settles deep in your bones and never really leaves you. An early morning with a blue sky in a foreign city and the boy he loves.

\---

“Would you have liked to be an emperor?” Harry asks. They’re lazily lounging on the grass of the Palatine Hill. Louis is pretty sure they aren’t supposed to do this, that they should, like, be visiting things they never got the chance to see, but he can’t really be bothered to move. The sun is high in the sky, the air around them incredibly soft. He feels content. 

“Maybe a few years ago I would’ve said yes,” Louis answers. “But not anymore, I don’t think so. Too many responsibilities you know. And being an emperor means you have no real freedom anyway. Also, half of them ended up being assassinated. I’d rather much live a long, happy life.” 

Harry laughs. “On the bright side, people end up writing tragedies about you.” 

“How on earth would that be the bright side, Haz? They’re called tragedies for a reason.”

“No, but I guess that the idea of being remembered is nice. That’s why we did what we did, right? Like, of course we liked to sing and it’s always cool to do what you love for a living but not everybody feels this…drive. Some people are quite content with singing in small bars or just for themselves. What I want to say is that we did all this because we wanted to be remembered.”

“I guess we did, yeah.”

“So, do you think people will remember us?”

“Of course they will. Maybe not for the reasons we want them to. Maybe some of them won’t remember us for our music and will only remember us as a silly boyband. But I don’t think it matters much in the light of those who will remember us for what we gave them. Even…even if it’s, I don’t know, a mum in her fifties hearing one of our songs on the radio, assuming radios are still a thing in the future, and thinking back to a time of her life this song used to bring her joy, it’ll be enough, you know?”

“I know,” Harry answers quietly, squeezing Louis’ hand.

Louis feels that there’s more that Harry wants to say. Things like, _was it worth it to have my face photographed nearly every singly day for five years? Was it right to enjoy it at times I felt I shouldn’t and to hate it at times I felt I should enjoy it_?

There could be a tragedy, in this. They don’t have to be emperors for that.

The answer Louis has, to every question Harry could ever ask him, is yes. It was all right to enjoy it at times. It was all right to hate it with his entire being. It’s all right to miss it. It’s all right to dismiss it and never think about it ever again.

And if it isn’t right now, then it will be. They have enough time to make sure of that.

\---

It’s almost dawn when Louis decides to join Harry on the balcony. Harry is sitting on a chair, chin resting on his knees and Louis is amazed at his never-ending capacity to make himself look smaller. It kind of breaks his heart how Harry never really accepted the sheer space he takes up when he’s in a room, how he’s always tried to diminish himself, to make himself look less, be less, than he really is.

Louis doesn’t say anything, just sits down in the chair next to Harry’s and waits for him to speak.

“The thing is,” Harry says – he’s not looking at Louis but at the rays of dawn breaking through the sky – “I don’t regret any of it.”

 Louis would be surprised at Harry’s words echoing his earlier thoughts on the plane, but he has long stopped being surprised at how incredibly in tune they are, most of the time.

“That’s a good thing isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure it is Lou. We did things. Like, we did things I know we shouldn’t be proud of. And things I’m not sure I want to remember. And I think, if I were a better person, I’d be ashamed of them you know? But I’m not. I don’t care about any of those things we had to do because being with you, right now, is all I’ve ever wanted.”

“I’m not gonna blame you for that, Haz,” he says, repeating the words he whispered against Harry’s neck on the plane.

“We’ve hurt people. I know we did and we’ve hurt each other too. And I keep thinking that I should feel terrible about it. That I shouldn’t feel so calm. That everything shouldn’t be this _silent_.”

“But?”

“But the truth is,” Harry shrugs, “I don’t care. And that’s what frightens me. I would…I would fucking get down on my knees and crawl on a thousand miles and more if I knew you were at the end of the road, Lou. I wouldn’t even hesitate, I’d just do it.”

Louis knows what Harry is saying. He’s saying, _it’s mad, isn’t it_? He’s saying, _please tell me I’m not alone in this madness, tell me you’ll always meet me halfway_. He’s saying, _there are roads and every one of them is bringing me back to you, every one of them is for me to crawl on and for you to stand at the end of it_. So Louis answers.

“Do you remember this time we were in Milan?”

“Yeah, of course I do.”

“You said that you wonder, sometimes, if Paris wasn’t the turning point, but I guess it was earlier for me. It was Milan. And like, it wasn’t sad. It was bright and happy and I remember thinking that I was ready to do anything to preserve that. What we had. I remember promising it to myself.”

“You never told me that.”

“Guess I didn’t. That’s the thing, though. Sometimes you make promises to yourself and to yourself only. And you still have to live with them when they become obsolete, when you don’t really have any reason to hold on to them anymore. “

They stay silent, for a while. 

“So maybe instead of thinking about wanting to remember us, we should remember ourselves,” Harry finally says. 

“Maybe. Maybe we aren’t meant to be emperors at all,” Louis answers.

“No,” Harry breathes. “Maybe we aren’t.”

\---

**_2\. America  
_** **_And I have nothing left to breathe_ **

They spend their first days in America in Orlando. Somewhere, during their last days in Rome, they’d silently agreed to avoid any places in the US where they had lived for some time.

The thing is, Louis had thought he remembered Orlando. Maybe not the details of it, but the big picture at least. Yet, being here feels like he’s just arrived for the first time, and the place is as foreign to him as bloody Antarctica would be. Louis is supposed to remember Orlando, he’s been here before.

He doesn’t.

And while it was fine, in the beginning, he’s starting to feel more and more upset about it, feels like he should remember, at least something. Anything.

“I don’t remember a fucking thing, Haz,” he finally says, during their second afternoon. “Not a single street, not a single detail. It’s all a blur.”

“Lou, you were really fucking exhausted at the time. It’s okay if you don’t remember it.”

“Is it?”

“It really is,” Harry answers.

“It’s just. How could I not remember? I know we were here, and I know the things we’ve done and I’ve seen the pictures and the fucking videos but it just. Doesn’t connect to anything, inside my mind. There’s nothing.”

“Lou. Lou, look at me.”

Louis does. He looks at Harry, eyes green and bright, hair pulled up in a bun, and he looks so incredibly luminous Louis feels small and yet like he’s taking too much space, feels on the verge of breaking. 

“It’s fine,” Harry whispers, pulling Louis into a hug, pressing him against his body, his arms engulfing him, and Louis keeps feeling smaller and smaller, like he could just disappear. “It’s fine, it’s your turn.” 

Louis starts crying. He doesn’t stop for the longest time.

\---

 Later, when Louis has stopped crying and they’re both nestled under the blankets in their hotel room, Harry says, “I was starting to wonder why you don’t seem angry at all. You’ve been so _calm_ about the whole thing. I was starting to wonder if it was only me.”

“I was upset for the longest time,” Louis starts. His voice still feels fragile and a bit too raspy but he knows that he can talk about it now. “Sometimes I still am, I think today was proof enough of that. But I think we come from very different places, you and I.” 

“What do you mean, Lou?” 

“Like maybe, maybe we didn’t want the same thing.”

Harry’s eyes widen at that. “Not the same thing? I thought we both wanted to be free. Free and together.”

Louis laughs and he knows it’s not a pretty laugh. He doesn’t want to seem harsh, knows it will get them nowhere so he says, softly: “That’s where you’re wrong. You wanted for us to be free. I wanted for us to win.”

“How is that not the same thing when being free means we’ve won?” 

“The thing is, winning isn’t something that happens once. It’s not like, this definite moment in time where you can tell, this is it, and I’ve won. You know how they say that gamblers, not the occasional gamblers those who are like, addicted to it, can never really win? That even if they do, they’ll never be satisfied? That’s because for us, for people who like winning, it’s something that needs to happen again and again. You never want to win just one time; you want to keep on doing it.” 

“Is this a roundabout way to apologize for those thousands you spent on cheating at FIFA six months later?”

Louis laughs again and it’s brighter, this time. “No. And I’m not apologizing for that, FIFA is a noble game. What I mean is, I wake up every morning and there are mornings where I feel those things you’re talking about. Where the weight of everything that’s happened to us is suffocating and like taking my next breath is the hardest thing I can do. It’s like there are stones on my chest and every inhalation, every exhalation is a battle I have to fight. But I also know who are the people who put those stones on my chest. I know them and I know that they would like nothing more than for me to cave in. To accept them as a deserved weight and to suffocate under them. So when that happens the only thing I can think of is that I refuse to cave in. I refuse to let them win.” 

“It’s just,” Harry hiccups and Louis can tell that he’s on the verge of crying, “that I feel so angry sometimes. Like, most of the time I don’t really care, you know? We’re here, and we’re alive and I think yeah, it was worth it. But then I think about some things Lou, like random things and I get so fucking angry. It’s like there’s something inside me, that never really stops screaming and I can usually ignore it but when I can’t anymore it overshadows every good thing we’ve had, every nice memory and I don’t know how to let it out and get rid off it. Sometimes, I’m afraid it’s going to consume me, and I don’t want it to. I don’t want to become that person.” 

“I knew I was gay like, really early on,” Louis says.

“I know that Lou.”

“I know you do, love. Just, let me tell the story? I swear I have a point.”

“Okay,” Harry says, and he sounds incredibly small.

In a way, Harry’s vulnerability erases Louis’ earlier one, helps him settle again. This is what he’s good at. Reassuring the people he loves, being strong for them. It’s easy for him to stop crumbling when he has to take care of someone else. He wonders what would happen if he let himself falter for more than a few hours. 

“So I knew I was gay for the longest time. And I didn’t really let myself think about it, because as much as I knew I was gay, I also knew it wasn’t the time nor the place to come out. Not that coming out means much at this age, more like you see everybody acting a certain way and it doesn’t make sense to you, you know? And you just want to tell them, well it doesn’t work that way for me, but you can’t, not really. So you don’t say anything, you smile along and try to blend in. And I guess as much as you understand why you’re doing this you can’t help but being angry at the situation. Because it’s unfair and it just shouldn’t be this hard for you when it seems so easy for everybody else,” Louis exhales. “What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that sometimes things are harder for you than they seem to be for most people and you resent it. It’s unfair, you think. But you can’t just yell at unfairness. So the anger you feel gets stuck. You want to yell at someone, but there’s no one to yell at.”

“So, what do you do?”

“You let it go.” Louis laughs, “I know it seems like shit advice but you just let it go, Haz. Because that’s how it works. You’ll have horrible things done to you and there’re only so many people you can blame. There are only so many people you can yell at. Those things, those horrible things that were done to you, you have to look at them and recognize them for what they are and that you couldn’t do anything to prevent them. That they weren’t your fault.” 

“I was only sixteen Lou.”

“I know.” 

“I was a fucking child. God, I thought I had it all worked out, you know? I was on the X Factor, and I was in love with you, and it wasn’t a stupid teenager kind of love, I knew it was proper adult love, and we were gonna move in together so I thought I was all grown up. And now I see sixteen years old looking at me and telling me I’ve saved them and the only thing I can think of is you’re so fucking young. And then I think that I was that young too and it wasn’t fair. They’re just. They’re just children Lou, and so was I. “

“You have no idea,” Louis says, “how sorry I am.” He turns to face Harry who is looking at him and it’s easy, in that moment, to forget who they’re supposed to be. It’s easy to forget about the fame, and how heavily it weighted on them, easy to forget about the terrible things they had to do.

This is who they are. Two random young boys, stripped of all pretences, in love and hurting.

There’s no real ending to this kind of hurt, Louis thinks. There’s no definite moment in time where you can say, this is when it stopped breaking me. You can’t erase what people did to you. Louis wants to say – it’s okay if you’re hurting and feel like screaming, it’s okay if there’s nothing and you just feel numb, to feel all those things at the same time. All of it, it’s okay. 

“So you just let it go?” Harry asks. “You don’t let the stones crush you?” 

“You don’t.”

“Okay,” Harry mumbles. “Okay, let’s try this.”

Louis feels exhausted, suddenly. This whole journey has been more akin to an ordeal than a real holiday and he feels so fucking tired. For one brief moment he wishes he could go back in time. He wants for them to be sixteen and eighteen again with such ferocity it leaves him almost breathless. Part of him knows it’s useless, knows there’s no going back and the truth is he doesn’t actually want to. He loves them both as they are now and understands that they could only be those people because of all they went through, yet there’s a tiny part of him, tiny but insistent, that wants to believe there could have been an easier way. A better one. Except that they aren’t young, disarmed boys anymore. They can do something about it now, and Louis will be damned if he doesn’t try.

“There are stones,” he murmurs. “There are stones on your chest and they’re incredibly heavy and you feel like you can’t breathe.” 

“Yes,” Harry exhales, tone half wondering, half trusting Louis to lead him wherever he wants them to. 

“I take one of them in my hands. It’s heavy but not too heavy for me to carry. It doesn’t really help with the pressure on your chest but you know that I’m here. You know that I can carry one stone and put it on the ground, next to you. It’s off your chest now. You can breathe a little more easily.” 

“I can.”

“I take another stone. It’s easier now, because we both know I’ve done it before. I take another stone and put it on the ground, next to the first one.”

 They both breathe at the same time.

“I take a third stone. I take the third stone in my hands.”

And Louis does. He takes metaphorical stone after metaphorical stone and puts them on an imaginary ground where they belong. When he’s done, he lies back on the mattress and lets Harry do the same thing for him. Stone after stone. 

They fall asleep with their chests touching, as close as they can be without melding into each other, all the stones on the ground forming a path they have long stopped walking on.

\--- 

When they leave Orlando, Louis is no closer to remembering what happened the first time they were there, but he doesn’t mind so much anymore. 

There is a path, he thinks. There is a path that would always lead me to you, even if I had to crawl on my hands and knees. A path carved out of stones.

 (On a thousand miles and more.) 

\---

They’re in a small bar in Buenos Aires, in the middle of a crowd. They’ve never been as anonymous as they are now. Nothing sets them apart from the crowd except for the very obvious fact that they aren’t from here. But being foreigners is better than being popstars. The air is hot and humid and Louis feels like he can barely breathe, like everything is too much. It may be the alcohol speaking or it may be the heady feeling of anonymity. Or both. Harry is pressed against him, the palms of his hands sweaty against Louis’ bare skin and if Louis were a little bit less drunk he’d think about how ironical it is that here, wearing one of those terrible tank tops that had become his uniform on stage during the past two years, he feels so free. He doesn’t. He’s drunk and the crowd is loud and the music even louder and Harry– Harry is pressed against him, his hands moving from Louis’ bare arms to his hips, his breath hot against Louis’ neck.

Something inside Louis clenches.

He turns around and falls into Harry. Harry is smiling at him, dimples showing, eyes bright and so green, and Louis presses against him more closely, as if he could somehow merge both of their bodies together and make them become one. It’s not- it’s not sexual. Not right now, not at this moment. It’s something else entirely. He wants for common limits to be abolished, for barriers as tedious as flesh to disappear, for them to become one being. It’s a bit mad, he knows. 

Louis doesn’t give a fuck.

He can barely breathe. He’s pressed against Harry and it’s all for him. Harry’s body, which has been put on display countless of times, which has been sexualized and objectified and sold as something people should consume, is there, against him, there for him. It’s his and only his. It’s his hands moving against Harry’s hips, it’s his breath against Harry’s neck, it’s him, making Harry shudder.

He knows they’re making a scene, knows how exposed they are and something in him relishes it. _Here we are_ , he wants to say, wants to yell. _Here we are, as beautiful and young and bright as you imagined us to be. And we are more – so much more. Because we are real_.

The beat keeps getting louder and louder and he keeps pressing into Harry, getting closer to him. He wants to devour Harry. He has never felt this hungry for him, this aching. No even after the tweets, when it felt that heir physical connection was the only thing left to ground them. It’s the atmosphere, he thinks, the sheer cliché aspect of it. His head feels heavy and everything is a blur but Harry. Harry, who’s here against him, who’s dancing with him. Harry. Harry when he was eighteen and Harry now. 

_How I love you_ , he thinks. _God, how I love you_.

So he tells him, because that’s what they do. 

“I am so fucking in love with you,” Louis whispers in Harry’s ear and it’s not the first time he’s told him, nor even the thousandth time yet Harry brightens up like it is.

“Lou,” he whispers brokenly and his hands settle on Louis’ arse, which is, Louis thinks, the perfect place for them to be.

“Yeah babe?” he answers, as innocently as he can.

“I want to fuck you,” Harry breathes and Louis wants to laugh, feels light and happy and so damn young.

“Too bad,” he answers. “I have other plans for you tonight.” 

“Yeah?” Harry’s eyes widen.

“Yeah,” Louis confirms.

He has– he does. He wants to put his mouth on Harry, wants to feel the sweat pearling on his body, wants to taste what Harry in this foreign country feels like. He wants Harry’s cock, heavy in his mouth, wants to feel the weight of it, wants to swallow him whole.

“Let’s go back,” he murmurs.

\--- 

They stumble into their hotel room and Louis whispers:

“All those people at the bar. You know they could see how into me you were. How much you wanted me Haz. Do you think they looked at us and wondered for how long we’d known each other? Or do you think they could tell?”

“Tell what, Lou?”

 “That we know each other, better than most married couples do. That we’ve been together for so long I can tell when you exhale, even when I’m on the other side of the room. That when you smile at other people I can tell it’s not the smile you have for me. That when you talk to other people, it’s not the voice you use for me.”

 “Isn’t this like, a bit possessive of you?” Harry laughs.

“Is it?” Louis asks. “I know you don’t belong to me. But people have spent so many years telling me you’d never belong to me and would always belong to others that I feel a bit entitled to being possessive, if I can be quite honest.” 

“That’s fine,” Harry whispers. “I don’t mind. I want you to kiss me in front of people. It’s stupid, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Such a simple thing, my boyfriend kissing me in front of other people. Yet there’s still something in me that feels like it’s forbidden, like we’re breaking the rules.”

And, suddenly, Louis isn’t in the mood anymore at all.

“We aren’t,” he says. “We aren’t breaking any rules, right now.” 

“I know, babe.”

“I want for it to stop, Haz. I want for everything to stop feeling so fragile. I want for things to be fine, without having to marvel at the fact that they’re fine. I want,” and his voice breaks, “sometimes, for this to never have happened. I want you, always you, but I want to meet you elsewhere, in other circumstances. And then I think that I have no right thinking that, wanting that, because you’re the best thing that’s happened to me and in the end the circumstances weren’t even that bad, you know?”

“You’re so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering,” Harry whispers, tracing idle patterns on Louis’ skin.

“Is it a quote?” Louis asks.

“Hemingway.”

“It’s lovely.”

“It is. Fits you. I see you and you’re the brightest, most luminous person I’ve ever seen and you’re so strong. You’re so incredibly strong sometimes I forget strength comes from broken places and I’m incredibly sorry. But I want you to know that there’s nothing about you that I would change, Lou. Not a single thing.”

“Okay,” Louis mutters tiredly.

The adrenaline he was feeling earlier is long gone and he can feel exhaustion settling deep in his bones. They’ve had this conversation before. Maybe not in so many words, but they did, and Louis knows that they’ll probably have it again. It would be lovely, he thinks, if they could just leave it alone, stop talking about it, stop thinking about it. He thinks about his own advice – letting it go.

_We will_ , he promises to himself in the darkened room, and he can feel the resolve burning hot in his throat, something deep and fierce. A promise to erase all those others, made in the dark.

 They will.

“Please tell me about those places where we could have met. I want to know.”

 So Louis tells him about a morning winter in Prague, where they bump into each other at the Kafka museum. He tells him about the time they fall in love on a beach near Hammamet. He tells him a story of them growing up together, of being neighbours and best friends in a small town in England. He tells him of finding each other at uni in Manchester or London – they’d like London. He tells him about thousands of lives he’s imagined and in every one of them they find each other and fall in love and live so happily. It’s a feeble attempt at comfort, but Louis is a songwriter at heart and this is what he knows.

 Here is what we are, he says, here is what we could be. Here is to you and me finding each other. Here is to us erasing the past, even if it’s for one night, here is to us dreaming.

Here is to us never stopping.

\--- 

The thing about Rio is that it’s fucking scalding hot. So hot that Harry has wondered about cutting his hair to make it more bearable, which Louis has absolutely forbidden even if he knows Harry doesn’t really mean it. Louis loves Harry’s hair exactly the way it is.

“It’s hot,” Harry says. And humans are funny like this, they like stating the obvious. Although Louis can’t really blame Harry because he feels like he’s melting. He may also be a tad irritable.

“I’m pretty sure human beings aren’t meant to bear these kinds of temperatures,” Louis complains.

“We can always go back to the hotel?”

“No. We said we would go see the statue and we will. No going back happening now, Haz,” Louis says before shutting up because it’s really fucking hot and he might die on the way up. He’s quitting smoking as soon as they get back down.

When they arrive it’s everything Louis remembers it to be and he laughs. He laughs, pure, unadulterated joy and relief because he had been so incredibly worried about it being a second Orlando. But no. He can tell exactly where they stood, where him and Harry entangled arms, and where they took selfies. He can remember Zayn’s laugh and Niall and Liam’s smiles and God. Here they are, two years later. Here they are and they can take selfies now, the only thing stopping them would be themselves and their wish to keep their holiday a secret.

“Let’s take a selfie, yeah?” Louis says. “We’ll post it when we’re home.”

“Sure,” Harry answers, getting his phone out.

They end up taking much more than one selfie and decide to send some of them to their friends and family.

Pictures are funny things. Looking at the ones they just took, one would think they’re both having the time of their lives. Enjoying their newfound freedom and being carefree in a way they’ve never been allowed to before. In a way they are. Louis thinks about a bar in Buenos Aires and taking pictures forbidden for so long. He thinks about laughing with Harry in Rome, the morning still early and quiet and sighing contentedly on a bench in Sweden. 

Those pictures are still kind of a lie. For every laugh, every happy moment they reflect they hide away the tears and the times they couldn’t keep it together. They tell a story that is theirs and real and yet is a careful fabrication of what they want the people they love to see.

It’s not a lie Louis minds telling.

They’ve given so much of themselves over the years, have let other people tell their own story for so long, their fans as their self-appointed biographers, that he’s wondered what would be left for them to keep once all was said and done – how could he _not_?

He’s not ashamed to admit that there are some parts of himself, some tiny parts that would have been inconsequential for people to know, that he’s kept to himself, has jealously guarded. He remembers waking up on mornings where the stones were heavier than usual, and going through all those little things, thinking this belongs to me, and me only. 

Harry, though. Well, at times it felt like Harry was giving away too much of himself, in utter disregard of the consequences. Louis remembers looking at him and wondering _what are you keeping for yourself? What part of you will be left for us, when we’re done?_

Thinking about it now, he understands that sometimes, the only way people can protect themselves is for them to seemingly give in to what others want from them. It’s not exactly an epiphany, but it’s still something akin to a realisation. People have taken much more from Harry than they ever took from him and Louis gets it, he really does. Harry built up a version of himself, one that wasn’t a lie but wasn’t entirely truthful either and gave it for the whole world to see and put its hands on.

( _Tell me, was I ever sometimes taken by it too_?)

The view, from where they’re standing, is breathtaking and it’s only been two years since they last stood there but it may as well have been a lifetime.

This is what we do with freedom, he thinks, pressing against Harry’s body. We go back to the places we were hurt and create new memories. We laugh again.

 We don’t give up.

\---

 Later, in a small Rio restaurant, recommended by one of their friends, they’re sat facing each other in the dim light, trying things they’ve never eaten and laughing softly.

The shadows are softening Harry’s features and Louis can’t help thinking about how young he is – how young they both are. He knows Harry in and out, knows the breakable parts of him, the bad parts, the ones he keeps hidden from everyone else. He knows where Harry is soft and vulnerable and ready to give up. He knows what he’s done over the years for Harry not to.

He thinks that he doesn’t care – isn’t this what it always comes back to? No matter what it is, no matter how morally unethical, he would still do it for Harry. Wouldn’t even think twice about it.

He’s already done it, the thing is.

And no, it’s not a fairy tale. It’s not about overcoming people who’ve harmed them and hurt them and shut them down, even though Louis firmly believes they were in the right and those people were in the wrong. It’s about winning, no matter what it entails. It’s about coming out on top.

It’s not a fairy tale, because it was war. It was blood and tears and staying up until early morning bargaining with high placed executives and it was holding Harry when he broke down and being held by Harry when Louis broke down himself. 

How easy, he thinks, for some of them to assume that it was all black and white, that it was _us_ against _them_ , that it was us against the world. How easy would it be now if this is what had actually happened, if there had been no compromises made along the road, if we had never accepted to do things we’re now ashamed of because we thought they would help us.

How utterly lovely, to believe it could be that simple.

He thinks about the bargains you make alone deep in the night, in foreign hotel rooms, when there’s no one to hear you, not even your deepest love. Of the sacrifices you make willingly, just so the people you care about don’t have to.

It’s not a fairy tale. It’s about a path, and what you’re ready to do to get at the end of it.

He doesn’t regret it.

He takes a bit of his food and squeezes Harry’s hand. 

\---

 “Where to now?” Harry mumbles sleepily on their third morning in Rio. The light of the bright morning coming through the curtains is soft and a bit grainy, making everything seem quiet and slow.

Louis is sitting on the bed, legs crossed, back resting against carefully arranged pillows, scribbling random words and sentences in a notebook. It’s not a song he’s writing, but it’s not _not_ a song. It’s something of a possibility. Something that could become a song if he tried hard enough to shape the words into something akin to lyrics, if he cut off the raw edges of them to make them smoother and easier to listen to. 

“Where not to?” he answers softly, the possibility of a song resting in his hands.

 Harry only smiles in return.

\---

 

**_3\. Oceania  
_****_Is this all we can achieve?_ **  

“Is the bar too small to be the right one too?” Harry asks jokingly.

Louis laughs: “No, I’m pretty sure it’s the right one. And I wouldn’t doubt you after the whole bench ordeal, anyway. It’s just.”

“Yeah?”

 “It’s funny how memory works, isn’t it? It feels like I can almost see us laughing, but it’s not something I can really remember. More like images and pictures I’ve seen so many times, again and again, that they somehow became part of my memories.”

They’ve been standing in front of it for the past ten minutes, not quite able to bring themselves to go inside. They must look a bit ridiculous but Louis doesn’t care. This feels important – like the last step of this journey they’ve undertaken what seems like months ago even though it’s only been a few weeks.

“We should go in,” he starts at the same time as Harry says: “Lou, what did you want to achieve when you suggested this holiday?”

“Don’t you want to go in?”

“I do. Can you just answer this for me first?”

They’ve only skirted around it, those past few weeks, going from city to city, from continent to continent, from hotel room to hotel room. They’ve never, really, sat down and talked about what had prompted this entire journey. There were other things to talk about.

“It’s just,” Louis shrugs. “Things weren’t quite all right, you know? Like, they should have been but they weren’t. I could feel it and you could feel it. So I thought maybe, maybe if we could go away just you and I, take some time for us and no one else and just let ourselves be, maybe it would help with whatever was happening to us. With how we felt.” 

“Thank you,” Harry says quietly.

“For what?”

 “For letting me know that it’s fine if things aren’t always easy. That this,” he gestures vaguely, “us being out and, like, on a break, doesn’t automatically means everything else has been forgotten.”

 “I think that nothing is ever really easy for anyone,” Louis says carefully. “But there are things we can be grateful for. I’m grateful that I found you. I’m grateful for all the memories we made over the years, even though sometimes I’m not sure they’re really mine. I’m grateful for this,” he says, and this time it’s his turn to gesture vaguely.

“For what?” 

“For the light. For the way the light looks here, how incredibly bright and pure it is. I’m grateful”, he exhales, “that we got to live through this together. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it with anyone else but you.” 

Harry kisses him, soft and reverent and Louis smiles because it’s not the first time they’ve kissed in Wellington but everything is so different now. Standing there, in front of this bar that holds an entire chapter of their history, it suddenly feels like he’s able to see distinctly the distance between then and now, to see how far they’ve come. It’s easy to forget it, engulfed in daily struggles and old hurts, but here it is. The bigger picture. 

“We’ve made it,” he whispers into Harry’s ear, still smiling. It’s not the first time he’s told him that but it’s more than a rushed declaration high on adrenaline and what felt like victory. It’s calmer now, surer. He knows it to be true.

Harry smiles back and answers “we did,” before taking Louis’ hand in his. “Come on”, he says, “let’s revisit the crime scene,” and Louis laughs and laughs and laughs.

\--- 

“I don’t think ‘strip scrabble’ is an actual thing Haz,” Louis hiccups, taking another sip of his beer. 

“It could be,” Harry insists. 

“How would that even work? Take off an item every time you score less than ten points? It’s just not practical.”

“Well then there should be like a scrabble drinking game,” Harry retorts. “That could work, no? One sip for every point your opponent scores.”

“Jesus and what if you score like sixty points? Do you want me to die? We’re never playing your scrabble drinking game.” 

Harry frowns but doesn’t reply. They’re not quite drunk but definitely tipsy enough to have engaged in a conversation about which board games would make good drinking games. Louis thinks that none of them would but Harry seems determined to prove him wrong.

“What about Monopoly then?” 

“If you find a way to make strip monopoly work I’m marrying you tomorrow,” Louis laughs.

“Well, if you’re giving me incentive Lou…”

They both start laughing again, giddy and happy.

“What you said earlier,” Harry starts, looking down at the table, his eyelashes forming shadows on his cheeks, ”me too. I’m grateful we went through all this together too. I know that things weren’t always perfect but I wouldn't want it any other way.”

“That’s the thing though, isn’t it?” Louis says. “We can’t change a thing.” He shrugs. “We did things. We travelled the world. I like to think,” he inhales shakily, “that for the most part we were happy.”

“We were.”

 --- 

They end up walking back to their hotel, the night dark around them and brisk fresh air making them shiver lightly. The moon is bright in the sky and Louis thinks about old song lyrics – _when the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only light we’ll see_. 

He thinks about the possibility of a song, still humming in his veins, about all the things that are still to come for them, all they still want to do.

_Is it crazy to miss it?_ Harry had asked, and Louis knows now that it was never really about missing what used to be. It was about missing a sense of purpose, a feeling of better things to come, of knowing where you were going. He thinks that they are incredibly human and fragile in the end.

“No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid, just as long as you stand, stand by me,” he hums softly.

 Harry takes his hand in his and intertwines their fingers together. Things are a bit clearer now, the future less frightening. The past, less of an overwhelming shadow and closer to a slowly fading memory.

 They keep on walking together.

\---

**_4\. Asia  
_** **_Surrender to this_ **

In Tokyo they spend several days wandering around the city. They go to a fish market and get lost under the shadows of cherry trees that have long stopped blossoming.

They don’t talk much about the past five years. Most of what they had to say has already been said.

“This is the end, isn’t it?” Harry asks one night. They’re both leaning on the balcony’s rail, admiring the view of the city spread out beneath them.

“I think it is,” Louis answers.

It doesn’t feel sad, exactly. A bit melancholic maybe.

Louis can feel that they are getting restless again but it’s not the restlessness without purpose that prompted their journey. It’s the kind of restlessness that comes with wanting to start something new, something exciting.

“I’m glad we did this. I’m glad we went around the world, just you and me.”

 “Yeah,” Louis answers softly. “Anytime.”

He inhales sharply, taking in the atmosphere of the city, the noise, the metallic smell specific to a big metropolis. He thinks the thing about having stones on your chest, stones that sometimes make it so hard to simply breathe, is how incredibly freeing it is not to feel them anymore, even though it never lasts forever.

“Home?” Harry asks.

“Home.” 

\---

**_5\. London  
_** **_Make me remember the song please, bring me back home_**  

They’re back in London. Or, it should feel like they’re back in London, but that’s the thing about airports. You never really feel like you’re back, until you’ve left the unreal neon lights behind you, the dimly lit duty free shops, the bright and busy terminals. So they’re back, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like something between them, something that has been growing since they first left, isn’t over yet, like they still have more to do.

“You feel it too?” he tells Harry while they’re waiting for their driver to arrive. 

“I do,” he answers. “I think I have an idea though, if you want?”

“Sure.”

 That’s how they find themselves in a tattoo parlour long past midnight.

“What do you want?” the tattoo artist asks.

“I think,” Harry says, “I think something small. In a place no one can see.”

What he means is: something for us and us only. Louis agrees. 

\--- 

It’s almost dawn when they finally get out, initials of all the places they went back to together etched across their skin. Louis likes the idea that it can be seen as a never ending work in progress, something they can always add letters to, something that’ll never be done as long as they stay together.

It’s this feeling of possibility again, he thinks as they start driving home. This feeling, like a bright morning in Rome, like a sunny afternoon in Tokyo, like the promises of places they’ve never been to, things they’ve never done, songs they’ve not written yet. 

And maybe the hurt never really ends. Maybe going around the world once, chasing memories that are no longer theirs isn’t quite enough for everything to feel intact again. Maybe it’s pointless to think about that.

If there’s something Louis is sure of, it’s that there are things that are worth coming back to, things that are worth remembering.

Like the way the light used to illuminate them.

So there is a path. A path carved out of stones. And at the end of the path, there is Harry; there is always Harry like the brightest future imaginable.

On a thousand miles and more.                                          

**Author's Note:**

> the original idea for the stone imagery isn't mine and comes from this incredibly beautiful work by pir8fancier [Lettered](http://archiveofourown.org/works/192712)
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr post](http://cleminism.tumblr.com/post/138559535262/thanks-to-julia-bunboyfriend-for-the)


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